Binge Recommendations - Day 5 - Fulla Filmy Goodness

Plenty of us with some extra time on our hands now. Given that, you could plow through some major film franchises during all that time at home. Are there any major film franchises out there that people could go through? Might be one or two…

Star Wars 
Number Of Films:- 11
Why’s It Good? Space wizards, weird aliens and funny robots fighting masked baddies, what’s not to like? 
Do I Have To Watch Them All? Not necessarily - you could the original 1977 film as a standalone (the one now titled Episode IV: A New Hope*) and Rogue One would work pretty well on its own, I reckon.
How Should I Watch Them? Well, you’ve got choices here. You could for the chronological order (I - III, Solo, Rogue One, IV-IX), you could go for release order (IV-VI, I-III, VII, Rogue One, VIII, Solo, IX) or you could always just skip the prequels…

James Bond
Number Of Films:- 24 (or 26)**
Why’s It Good? Spies, super villains and gadgets with the option to reinvent itself every few years by recasting the lead (the Doctor Who of the film world)
Do I Have To Watch Them All? Nope, for the most part you can watch each one without any knowledge of previous films, up until the Daniel Craig years where you have got some continuing plot threads going on. Seeing as the release of Craig’s last outing as Bond has now been delayed, now would be a good time to catch up.
How Should I Watch Them? However you want with these ones. Being an anal retentive type, I would probably go start to finish but you could always watch by Bond (pretty quick bingeing if you go for Lazenby) or just pick ones you like at random.

Studio Ghibli
Number Of Films:- 21 (plus a couple often counted as Ghibli films)
Why’s It Good? Often referred to as the Japanese equivalent of Disney (which I feel is a little reductive given the breadth of different subjects and styles covered by the films), these are animated films of the highest quality
Do I Have To Watch Them All? Not at all - they’re all standalone films so you can dip in and out of the ones that interest you.
How Should I Watch Them? If you’re looking for something that all the family can enjoy, My Neighbour Totoro and The Cat Returns are good entry ones (as are Kiki’s Delivery Service or Howl’s Moving Castle). If you’re something with more weight to it, Grave Of The Fireflies will break your heart.

Carry On
Number of Films:- 31 (if you include Carry On Columbus...which you probably shouldn’t)
Why’s It Good? They’re not always, let’s be honest, and they contain some truly horrendous attitudes but there’s a breezy cheerfulness that everyone could do with at the moment.
Do I Have To Watch Them All? It’s probably best that you don’t; I’m not sure the human brain can cope with such concentrated levels of pure innuendo (in your endo…)
How Should I Watch Them? With a couple of beers probably for best effect. ..At Your Convenience and ...Girls were always favourites when I were a nipper. Just be sure to view with the lens of these as products of a different time and lower the usual offensiveness register.

That’ll keep you going and it’s covered plenty of different bases. As always, there’s plenty more to recommend but we’re in this for the long haul so stay tuned for round two of recommendations.


* Yeah, tricky trying to talk about "first film" in a franchise that released Episode I twenty two years later...
** Depends on whether you count Casino Royale from 1967, a comedy featuring David Niven as original James Bond and six other people (including Peter Sellers) are pretending to be Bond; or Never Say Never Again in which Sean Connery unofficially returned as Bond in this remake of Thunderball made possible by a weird rights ownership loophole.